"We have serious doubts it was an accident, and prepared
footage of the jet downing suggest the opposite," Lavrov said.
"It all looks like a planned provocation."

"We're not going to wage a war against Turkey ... But we
will seriously reconsider our agreements with the Turkish
government," he added, according to
a translation provided by the state-owned Russian news agency
Sputnik International and corroborated by the
Associated Press.

"Our attitude to the Turkish people hasn't changed," Lavrov
continued. "We only have questions about the Turkish
leadership."

Lavrov was due to visit Turkey on Wednesday, but he
canceled his tripafter the incident. Still, he noted
that Moscow was "not avoiding contacts with Ankara — my phone
conversation with the Turkish foreign minister is a proof" of
that.

Lavrov spoke with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu
on Tuesday, according to
Reuters. But there are conflicting reports over whether
Lavrov had agreed to meet with his Turkish counterpart.

Turkey defended its decision to down the plane on
Tuesday,
contending that the plane was in Turkish airspace and had
been warned repeatedly before it was shot down by Turkish F-16
jets. But Russian President Vladimir Putinsaid the plane was destroyed by a Turkish missile
while flying in Syrian airspace, roughly a mile from the Turkish
border.

Turkey released a radar
map on Tuesday purporting to show the location where a Russian
jet entered Turkish airspace.Turkish
military/CNN Turk

"Our pilots didn't threaten Turkey," Putin
said from theRussian Black Sea resort of Sochi
before a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah. "This is
obvious."

"We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and
oil products from territory captured by Islamic State have been
arriving on Turkish territory," Putin continued. "And now we get
stabbed in our back and our planes, which are fighting terrorism,
are struck."

He added: "Today's tragic event will have serious
consequences for Russian-Turkish relations."

Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Washington,
D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
told Business Insider the bellicose rhetoric coming from
Russia was to be expected and would most likely continue — but is
unlikely to be followed up by any overt, aggressive
retaliation.

"Putin will need to save face and will offer a lot of stern
language, but his options are limited if he doesn't want to start
a war with NATO at this moment," Zilberman said on
Tuesday.

A screenshot from a BBC
video showing the crash.BBC

But Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security affairs
and professor of global affairs at New York University, wrote on his blog
on Tuesday that "some kind of retaliation" could be
expected.

"We can expect some kind of retaliation on the
political-economic front (maybe stopping Turkish airliners coming
to Russian airports?) and maybe also some unloading of additional
serious ordnance on Turkish-backed elements in Syria."

Galeotti's latter prediction may be panning out already: On
Wednesday morning, Russia
began
bombarding rebels — including Turkmen insurgents, who have
ethnic ties to Turkey — in Syria's Latakia province,
ignoring demands made by Turkey over the past week to end
its military operations close to the Turkish border.

Russia also announced Wednesday that it would deploy
state-of-the-art S-400 missile systems to the Russian
Hemeimeem air base in Latakia — 30 miles south of the Turkish
border, AP
reported.

The moves are sure to exacerbate tensions with Turkey and
further complicate the muddled military situation in
Syria.